Apple Log vs Apple Log 2: Which LUT Do I Actually Use?

Since the iPhone 17 Pro — and now the 18 Pro — there are two things called Apple Log, and the phone lets you pick either in a menu most people have never opened. They look identical on the phone. They are tagged almost identically in the file. They need different LUTs.

This is the short version of why, how to tell which one you shot, and what actually happens when you get it wrong — with numbers, because we ran the test.

The curve. Apple Log 2 uses the Apple Log transfer function unchanged. The published anchor points — 18% grey at code 0.488, 90% white at 0.682, twelve times white at 1.0 — are the same numbers, and our engine decodes them to the same values. Anything that gets Apple Log tone right gets Log 2 tone right: exposure, contrast, where the blacks sit. If your footage is mostly a face against a neutral wall, the two decodes are close.

The gamut. Apple Log records into Rec.2020 primaries. Apple Log 2 records into a new space, Apple Wide Gamut, whose red and blue corners sit outside Rec.2020 — the blue primary is further out than ARRI Wide Gamut 4's. Apple's own white paper gives the primaries as R (0.725, 0.301), G (0.221, 0.814), B (0.068, −0.076), D65 white. Saturated blues, reds and magentas have somewhere to go instead of clipping at capture, which is the whole point.

A conversion LUT is two operations: undo the curve, then convert the gamut to Rec.709. The first is identical between the two. The second is a different 3×3 matrix — and because Apple Wide Gamut is wider, the Log 2 matrix has to pull harder. Use the Rec.2020 matrix on Log 2 footage and you pull too gently.

We took a 17 Pro clip recorded in Log 2 and decoded a frame two ways with the same neutral grade: once through the Apple Log path (Rec.2020 matrix) and once through the Apple Log 2 path (Apple Wide Gamut matrix). Everything else identical.

• Average difference across the frame: ΔE 2.95. 95th percentile: 7.4.
• 40% of pixels differ visibly (ΔE above 3); 10% differ strongly (above 6).
• The error concentrates in the greens: foliage came out about 5 ΔE flatter and slightly bluer under the Apple Log decode.
• Direction: the Apple Log LUT under-corrects Log 2. The result is desaturated and cool, not oversaturated. The Log 2 decode is the greener, denser image.

So: not broken, and on a phone screen you might not notice. On a monitor, on anything with colour in it, you will. And it is the kind of error that quietly makes a grade harder to finish, because you end up fighting a shift you cannot name.

On the phone: Settings › Camera › Formats › ProRes Log Video Encoding — Log or Log 2. Whatever it says is what every ProRes clip since you set it is.

In the file: open the clip in MediaInfo, or run ffprobe. Apple Log clips carry BT.2020 colour primaries. Apple Log 2 clips carry unspecified primaries — Apple Wide Gamut has no standard code point to declare, so the field is left blank. Both show the same unspecified transfer and a BT.2020 matrix, which is why the tag alone looks so similar. Final Cut Pro reads the same tag and names the profile in the inspector.

Which phones: 15 Pro and 16 Pro record Apple Log only. 17 Pro and 18 Pro (and their Pro Max) record either. The iPhone Duo records neither.

DaVinci Resolve: either set the clip's input colour space to Apple Log 2 in a colour-managed timeline, or apply the apple-log-2 .cube on one node and leave colour management off for that clip. Not both. The DCTL version in the pack zip does the same maths with no lattice at all.

Final Cut Pro: the Camera LUT slot reads the clip's tag and offers the matching built-in conversion; swap in ours for the look, or stack a look-only file (also in the zip) on top of Apple's decode.

Premiere Pro: apply the .cube on an adjustment layer or in Lumetri's Input LUT. Premiere does not distinguish the two profiles automatically, so this is where the setting on the phone matters most.

CapCut and phone editors: import the .cube as a filter. Same rule — one file, the right one.

Two packs, one decode each, so the file you download is always the right one for the setting on the phone. The iPhone Apple Log pack decodes Apple Log; the iPhone Apple Log 2 pack is the same eleven looks with the Apple Wide Gamut decode in front of them — the looks are authored on the decoded image, so only the maths changes. The free neutral conversion, True iPhone, is on the Apple Log and Apple Log 2 pages at full strength, no watermark. Our Log 2 matrix is derived from the primaries in Apple's white paper and cross-checked against two independent derivations of it, which agree to seven decimal places; the DCTL export matches the engine within 32-bit float noise on every grade.